If you’ve ever seen the Tom Cruise film Minority Report you will remember the scene in which his character is a fugitive running through a shopping mall and having interactive ads speak directly to him. In the film’s future, cameras identified passersby via retinal scans and passed that info to surrounding holographic billboards. While we are not near that level of invasive interactive advertising, outdoor signage companies are testing a variety of technologies to better engage viewers with more targeted marketing messages.

An announcement came last week that Yahoo! Japan — the number one property among Japan’s online media and shopping destinations — had partnered with digital signage company Comel Co., a fully-owned subsidiary of Softbank Corp. (TYO: 9984), to launch a test of facial recognition billboards. The idea is that passersby will have their picture taken (but not saved), analyzed by software from NEC Corporation (TYO: 6701) that determines gender and age (within a range) and then have targeted Yahoo! Japan content shown to them.

There are different types of content that would work well with this type of targeting such as:
- young girls would see the Hanna Montana movie trailer driving them to the local theater while older boys would get pushed to Wolverine,
- local clothing stores could advertise age and gender appropriate sales items.

With numerous ways to identify and message people (e.g. – bluetooth cell phones, RFID tags, even retinal scans), billboards will soon target users with a message and then be able to send a call-to-action to their wireless devices or online accounts. I think that it’s only a matter of time before people begin to expect this type of interactivity from digital signs. They won’t want to be personally identified but they will want the signs to provide content that is better suited to who they are, where they are and maybe even where they’re heading to or from.

What do you think about this scifi technology beginning to go mainstream? Do you fear it or are you ready to embrace it?

WangYou Media was granted China’s first online video broadcasting license issued to a social networking site. The license was issued by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT). In China, there are approximately 130 millions social networking users. WangYou.com claims to have 11 million users.

“We’re very happy to become the first company to be granted this important license in the SNS sector,” Buddy Ye, Co-founder & CEO of WangYou Media said. “We constantly strive to provide the best online entertainment service product for our users. Apparently, video is one of the most popular forms of online entertainment today. I honestly believe this Video Broadcasting License will allow us to offer better video-oriented service and strongly contribute to our user growth, eventually building upon our position as the market leader in the SNS industry in China.”

China Mobile’s Zhejiang branch agreed (NYSE:CHL) to use Alipay’s online payment service. Alipay is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alibaba Group (HKG:1688), will provide payment services for all mobile service subscriptions.

Most analysts agree that “the cooperation is the first one China Mobile has entered into with a third-party online payment platform operator, said market observers. China Mobile, once the outrunner in the Chinese telecom market, used to take charge of every lucrative business itself in the past 2G era.”

By limiting this deal to Zhejiang, a province with a population of approximately 47 million, it appears that China Mobile is using this as a test. Is this a shift in strategy for the telecom giant and a return to its core competency? Is this a tactical move to put a strangle hold on its key competitors– China Telecom and China Unicom– who have all been trying to positions their companies for 3G service.

China Mobile Ltd. (CHL), the country’s largest mobile operator by subscribers, will spend CNY70 billion on its rural network over the next three years, company Vice President Li Zhengmao said Wednesday.

China Mobile spent CNY19.5 billion on its rural network in the last five years, Li said at an industry forum in Beijing.

The CNY70 billion will mostly be invested in the company’s 2.5G network, Li said.

As reported by paidcontent, vertical content network Glam Media has raised a $10 million fifth round of financing from Japanese VC Mizuho Venture Capital and a group of strategic investors including ad agency Dentsu Inc. (TYO: 4324) and magazine publishers Shogagukan and Syueisha. With part of the round coming from German media company Hubert Burda, the $10 million will be allocated to bolstering Glam’s presence in Japan as well as in Germany.

As a point of reference, Glam launched its Japanese unit, Glam Media Japan KK back in November 2008. The company recruited Yukihiro Yamamura as CEO, taking him from his CEO position at DoubleClick Japan. With its leadership in place the announcement of this current round is as much about cementing its strategic relationships with Japanese ad and media firms as it is about putting cash in its coffers. The composition of its investors is a good sign that Japanese marketers feel comfortable with the Glam platform of lifestyle properties. The site already attracts leading brand advertisers such as: Maybelline New York, Fendi Japan, MHD Diageo, Moet, Hennessy and ANA.

Maybe we can expect Yamamura to receive some executive star power from Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, the former president for Google’s Asia-Pacific & Latin American Operations. Cassidy, who had been rumored to be in the running to take Tim Armstrong’s place as head of ad sales after he departed Google to become CEO of AOL, has actually joined VC firm Accel Partners which is an investor in Glam Media. In her role as a “CEO-in-Residence” she will support Accel’s portfolio companies and it seems that helping to build Glam Japan could be a good fit for her. Currently Glam Japan reports an average of about 1 million uniques per month.